LEAPIN’ LIZARDS! Franklin girls star in musical 'Annie'

FRANKLIN – It’s the “hard-knock life” for two young Franklin sisters who are on the road with the national tour of “Annie the Musical” – and they’re loving every minute of it.

Amanda Wylie, 12, and her 9-year-old sister, Katie, are among the troupe of orphan children in the Tony-winning “Annie,” which is based on the comic strip, “Little Orphan Annie.” It’s a charming story set during the Depression with memorable songs about an 11-year-old girl who just wants a family to call her own.

Since October the Wylie sisters, along with their mother Kristen, have traveled with the cast by bus to nearly 70 cities across the U.S. in Canada. Just since February, they will have performed “Annie” 56 times and traveled 11.542 miles when “Annie” comes to Boston May 9-21.

“By the time the tour’s over, we’ll have been to almost 90 cities,” said Amanda, an articulate 4-foot-9-inch seventh-grader with beautiful expressive blue eyes. Katie is a bubbly third-grader with dark eyes and long brown hair who is just over 4 feet tall but can belt out a song the whole audience can hear.

The sisters play two of the seven orphans in the show, one of whom is, of course, the smart but incorrigible red-haired girl at the center of the story who tries to escape her orphanage’s mean caretaker to find her parents. Along the way she rescues a mixed-breed dog who becomes her companion, Sandy, and she melts the heart of the orphanage’s billionaire benefactor, Oliver “Daddy” Warbucks.

Although they previously attended Franklin schools, Amanda and Katie now take classes online through TECCA Connections Academy, a Massachusetts public virtual school that allows them to continue their schooling on the bus or in hotel rooms while they’re crisscrossing the country between performances.

At night they stay with their mom in a hotel room, where she helps seventh-grader Amanda, who is interested in ancient history, and third-grader Katie, who loves to write, do their homework.

There are seven children in the show, including Angelina Carballo who plays “Annie.” Angelina, 12, recently took over the starring role for Tori Bates, the first biracial child to play the iconic part on national tour, who had to leave the tour recently for health reasons.

The orphan roles call on all the Wylie girls’ talents, singing, dancing, acting – and a big dose of patience. They change costumes nearly a dozen times, from pajamas to daywear, to colorful dresses, hats, flannel pants, smocks and more. Sometimes they wear multiple layers, and under the stage lights, “It can get really hot,” said Amanda.

The girls have made fast friends with the cast, and each of them has a best friend on the tour who also play roles as orphans.

“I’m a crybaby – and I say, ‘Oh, my goodness!’ a lot,” said Amanda of her character, an orphan named Tessie.

Both girls started dancing and singing just a few years ago, and they auditioned for “Annie” last summer almost by chance, while they were on a trip to New York for classes at the Broadway Artists Alliance. “They did it just for fun to have the experience of doing a real New York audition without the expectation of anything ever happening,” their mother said.

The two have also taken classes in acting, voice and dance, and performed at Broadway in Franklin, and with Raye Lynn Mercer at the Franklin School for the Performing Arts.

Favorite past local productions include “Snow White and the Seven Elves” and “The Little Mermaid,” where Amanda played the part of Flounder and Katie was a shrimp.

“We also did an opera, ‘Amahl the Night Visitors,’” said Amanda. “That might have been my favorite – I got to play the lead.”

The girls have come a long way in just two short years.

“One of my teachers told me, if you want to be a good singer, you need to be able to tell a story with your face,” Amanda said. “So I started taking acting lessons. Then I wanted to be in all the shows they were doing, like ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and ‘The Music Man.’ That was when I was 10. We had to work very hard.”

The “Annie” tour has been an experience of a lifetime for the whole family. Their father, Troy, who works in sales, has been holding down the fort at home and feeding the family cat, Luxray, who’s named for a Pokemon character. But he’s been able to hop aboard a plane several times to see the girls perform in some of the larger cities like Miami, Chicago, San Jose, California, Atlanta and Fort Worth, Texas.

Meanwhile, Amanda, Katie and their mom are all enjoying seeing the country from the windows of the bus. Sometimes they only play one night in a city, and then are back on the bus the next day at 7 a.m.

“We’ve seen some pretty cool things,” said Amanda. “We’ve seen Yellowstone (National Park); we saw cattle being herded along a lonely highway. We saw roadkill. We saw an elk in Montana. We also saw the St. Louis arch – twice.”

Kristen is a product marketing manager at Kronos in Chelmsford, and her job gives her flexibility so she can travel with the tour and work remotely. All youngsters on the tour are required to have a parent or guardian along on the trip.

“Actually, we went by the St. Louis arch three times,” Kristen said, joking. “By the third time, I decided just to let them sleep.”

Katie said she hopes to wow folks in Boston with her favorite number, “You’re never really dressed without a Smile,” because “it’s just the orphans on stage and it’s a big dance number.”

For Amanda, “It’s a Hard Knock Life” is the show’s special tune, because “there’s so much going on. We’re jumping on the bunk beds, throwing the blankets and the laundry basket. I love moving and singing at the same time.”

Nancy Olesin is arts editor for the Daily News and GateHouse New England's Metro papers. Follow her on Twitter @WickedLocalArts or like our Wicked Local Arts Facebook page.